The present invention relates to a communication apparatus such as a personal computer in which upon receipt of an article such as an electronic mail from a sender, it is expressed with a still picture, animation or sound based on personal information such as a name and age, on geographical information such as a distance from the sender, geographical features or place name, and on meteorological information such as a climate that the article has been sent from the particular sender.
In recent years, personal computer network and the Internet have become broadly popular, and it is desired for such communication systems using network to provide a user interface which is easy to operate also for children or beginners and which enables enjoyable communication.
When an article such as an electronic mail sent through a network arrives, a user requests a server for a list of articles, whereupon a list by text is displayed which contains names of senders, sending date and time, title, destination (addressee), identification (ID) information, etc. The user then downloads from the server the article he or she wishes to read.
Such list of articles by means of text being uniform and abstract, it tends to be quite uninteresting especially for children. Since children can not experience the fun of communication through an electric mail, they hardly have a desire to positively use a personal computer. With these points in mind, a communication system which prepares multimedia information suitable for children, such as pictures of lovely designs or sound effect to visually and auditorially materialize abstract concepts such as sending/receiving of articles to attract children attention by using the multimedia information.
In such conventional communication system as explained above, it can be concretely experienced with eyes and ears that he or she is communicating through the personal computer. However, it does not offer a service of providing more concrete data concerning who has sent the article from what kind of place or beyond what kind of place, although such data would lead to have the user (which may not always be children) a more concrete image, thereby making the user interested in communicating through the personal computer and letting him or her experience the fun of communication by using the personal computer.